Riassunto esame Lingua e Traduzione Inglese II, prof.ssa Sciacco, libro consigliato Tourism Discourse Professional Promotional and Digital Voices, Maci

The conflict approach where there is a familiar, us, and the strange, them, depicted

• through the use of language, whose main purpose is to make what is unknown less

dangerous. This can work through the use of stereotypes.

Multimodality in promotional tourism genres

Textual analysis must focus on the relationship between verbal and iconic elements of the

text. The layout of tourist texts follows a very precise composition plan. The position of

illustrations, the texts, the frames in which they are set, their interrelation and interaction,

form a composition, which depends on the fact that Western cultures follow a z-reading

pattern of active reading.

The text has a natural division in a Z-form from left to right, from top to bottom, from

centre to margins, defining the parts where the visual elements are placed.

Elements placed to the left of the horizontal axis of the page correspond to Given

information, things that the reader already knows; while, on the right we find the New

elements, which are not yet known.

Elements in the upper part of the page appeal to the reader’s emotions, expressing what

might be, thus referring to Ideal; the bottom elements have an informative value, referring

to Real. Also, the elements placed in the Centre are essential information, while those

placed in the Margins are subsidiary parts of the image core.

Z-reading pattern can be a way of reading webpages, but the usual division between

given/new and ideal/real and centre/margins can hardly be applied to the webpages, as the

information follows interactivity, and hyperlinks can cause several problems.

Chapter 5 – Tourism advertising texts

The main feature of a successful advertisement is immediate comprehension of the text. The

audience understands a text first at a linguistic macro-level: the genre.

The advertising layout refers to the appearance and style of the advertisement. To be

successful, advertising must attract attention, hold that attention, make it memorable and

finally, encourage an action. Also, advertisement should have an attention value, obtained

through an appealing image and the violation of some rule of language. Ads should be

characterized by readability, with simple, colloquial, and personal forms, and

memorability, making a lasting impression. All of this helps to build the selling power of

the text.

In tourism, advertising text consist of a large picture which makes a visual statement. This is

superimposed by the slogan, usually a memorable phrase, linked to the location. Then

there’s the headline, large-print words at the top of the page whose aim is to attract the

tourists. It characterizes the benefit of the product. It has to present a topic which the

potential tourist can easily associate to by emphasising a special feature. Also, its design has

to be eye-catching, with short sentences and script in large, brightly-coloured letters.

In some cases, headline and slogan are the same. The sub-headlines help the reader to

better understand the advertised text. The body-copy is the main text in which the principal

features of the destination are described, together with benefits. Its language is usually

precise, factual, and explanatory, as it must show the benefits and features of the location,

by presenting what makes it unique. The trademark is the distinctive word, phrase, logo,

domain name, graphic symbol, slogan, used to identify the tourist destination. The logo is

the destination’s trademarked version of its name. The slogo is the slogan used in an

advertising campaign.

Attention-value strategies: code switching

Tourism advertisements promote a destination which is physically far, so the longer the

distance, the more exotic a place is. In order to convey this kind of exotic feeling in the text

it’s necessary to use some words of the language spoken in the destination country. This

strategy achieves the attention of the audience and offers an insight of the cultural

background of the source language. However, it goes against the fact that to be successful

an advertisement text must be understood. In fact, using words from other languages, code

switching, has a chance of making more difficult to understand the intention behind the

speaker’s communication.

Chapter 9- Digital communication in tourism

Tourism discourse and the Net

The rapid growth of travel demand in the last period has required a rapid transformation of

the tourism industry, shifting the focus to the tourist’s decision-making process. Since

holidays cannot be inspected for purchase beforehand, tourists try to minimize the gap

existing between their expectations and their experience by seeking as much information as

possible. The Internet has begun to be regarded as a convenient source of information.

However, one of the issues of tourism industry regards the strategies used to present

destination on the Net, so decisions must be taken about what networks to take into

consideration and what projects to invest in. Tourism industry plays an important role in the

exploitation of a persuasive type of language in order to promote a product by describing a

reality that has to be perceived as authentic and genuine. To create such language, tourism

industry has adopted always texts characterized by the relations between verbal and iconic

elements.

When tourism texts are uploaded in the Net and become hypertexts, the potentialities of the

multimodal relationship between verbal and iconic components are further augmented. The

main feature of hypertexts is that their information is selected and designed to attract

attention by breaking conventional reading patterns. So, the web has allowed the potential

tourist to take an active role in the selection of the destination. They are prosumers, tourist

consumers who have become producers. With web 1.0 potential tourists search for

information about the destination, but with web 2.0 they are authors of the texts they share

or comment.

Corpus and methodological approach

The fact that the UK has acquired such a prominent position in the traditional tourist market

provides clear evidence of a well-constructed and successful campaign promoting various

types of destination for different types of customers. Maci concentrated on the website of

the British National Tourism Agency website (www.visitbritain.com), on the official sites of

the top four destinations in the UK, i.e., London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast and on the

homepage of the Official Tourism Website for the Liverpool City Region. In the first phase

of her study, Maci reviewed the sites from a semiotic perspective to comprehend how

multimodal discourse had been elaborated. The second stage of her investigation was

focused on the linguistic contents of the web-sites. All the texts accessible from the

homepages with a single click were collected (on Jan 28th, 2008) from the digital source

and extracted in Word format. A corpus of 82,257 words was created and analysed both

quantitatively and qualitatively.

Visual analysis. Semiotic background. The layout of the web pages follows a very precise

composition plan which can easily be detected thanks to multimodal analysis. The positions

of the pictures, texts, video-clips, the frames in which they are set, their interrelation and

interaction are conveyed to the reader thanks to various interrelated systems of information

existing within any text. The way in which composition is realized depends on the fact that

when we read we follow a Z-reading pattern.

Visual and verbal elements appear to be well balanced. The presence of links regarding

accommodation, places to go, events, maps, guides, etc. transforms the top part of the web-

page into a semiotic unit which can be divided between Ideal (the photo, i.e., what London

seems) and Real (the links, i.e., what London actually is.).

The frames found below London’s skyline can, in turn, be analysed as semiotic units, which

are mainly divided into Given/New pieces of information – the Given being represented by

a picture, the New by the texts which thus function as the caption of the visual.

The use of colours appears also well-balanced since blue, green and orange are put to avoid

any disturbing contrast. The constant factor seems to be the division of the homepage into

three columns, according to the given/new pattern and with the presence of the same

colours. The sensation conveyed to the virtual tourist is that of a metropolis in which arts,

traditions and events are interestingly mingled: it is up to ‘People like you’ to discover them.

The website provides the tourist with a treasure map; the tourist is invited to explore the

“treasure island”.

The 2017 edition offer an unbalanced representation of visual and verbal elements, although

the webpages still create a harmonious view. Compared to the 2008 edition, these pages can

be still analysed as two semiotic units, which are mainly divided into Given/New pieces of

information – the Given being represented by pictures with interactive captions, the New by

the texts which urge the virtual tourist to act.

The linguistic analysis of such texts is necessary to understand the different linguistic

strategies. The language of tourist websites is more similar to general discourse since such

multimodal texts are examples of communicative interactions between specialists and non-

specialists. Yet the nature of the web-language of tourism appears to be persuasive and

therefore evaluative because of its promotional function.

In tourism discourse, what is important is to recreate a relationship of authenticity between

the tourist and what they will see. A destination is perceived as authentic when the

expectations of the tourist and the pleasure of experiencing the holiday are the same. To

achieve authenticity, tourism texts use emotive words, or keywords (actual, authentic, real,

typical, and very) used to fulfil their expectations but rarely corresponding to reality.

At the same time things, sights and cultures are indeed appreciated because they are

different from what is familiar. The positive value of diversity is usually represented by key

words which also imply different values characterizing tourist destinations, such as

preservation (untouched, primitive, natural), continuity (tradition, timeless, unchanging),

novelty (different, exotic, adventurous), distance (remote), exclusiveness (exclusive, unique)

and attractiveness (colourful, fascinating, spectacular).

Mediatisation is a process by which contemporary society is being “permeated by the

media to an extent that [they] may no longer be conceived of as being separate from cultural

and other social institutions”.

Convergence represents a change in basic assumptions – a move from medium specific

content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdependence of

communications systems, toward multiple ways of accessing media content, and towards

ever more complex relations between top-down corporate media and bottom up

participatory culture.

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